


Why Did You Come Back (Revisited)

by lodessa



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, F/M, but you know, happy valentine's day fandom, i dreamed of you, i still have feels, rating purely for minor language, this might be the sappiest thing i've ever written for them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 19:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13688151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: This time, she is the one to come back for him.





	Why Did You Come Back (Revisited)

“Why did you come back?” He asks through chattering teeth.

They are huddled together as far from the shallow cave entrance as they can manage, though it does little to fight the intensity of the blizzard. The makeshift fort of furs, draped over them both, blocks out the light more than the cold. In the darkness, there is a feeling of otherness, like they have stumbled into a different reality.

“I asked you the same question once,” Brienne replies. “Do you remember?”

Does he remember? A ludicrous question. Of course he does. Sometimes it feels as though he can remember nothing else. 

“I told you I dreamed of you.” He says it more softly than he did then, the cover of darkness a shield against the betrayal of his expression and their faces so close he can feel the movement of the air with her breath.

“Did you really?” She stops and he can feel her pause before taking a deep breath. “Dream of me that is.”

He thinks he might know what she is asking: Why did he dream of her? Will he say more now? 

“I think you know I did,” Jaime replies, wondering exactly how much to say. 

The secret truth he’s only just now beginning to let himself see is welling up within him, his motivation since the fall gradually becoming clear. Should he speak it? He’s never courted anyone, never balanced on that delicate thread, and Brienne is equally ill equipped he thinks for the usual forms.

Those who lack subtlety must blunder on without. He wants to tell her; that’s the truth.

“That answer was an evasion, though, just as your asking about it now is… an attempt to deflect away my question. Why come back for me? Why risk your life to search for the crippled exile in the heart of the storm?”

Brienne is very quiet for a time. Jaime doesn’t need to see to know her face is undoubtedly flushed.

“I just couldn’t…” she shudders out of sync with the rest of her shivering, “I couldn’t leave you out here to die.”

“For chivalry?” he questions, knowing that she is that stubbornly idealistic and honorable, that it is possible she would have done this for anyone.

“No it was more selfish than that. I could objectively have done more good staying with the others. I just couldn’t endure the idea of it happening again.”

“Of what happening, Brienne?” he presses, and immediately regrets it as he can feel her recoil.

“Nothing,” she closes off, “It doesn’t matter.”

He’s not sure if he knows in that moment or it is just pure blind hope, but it gives him the courage to say what he could not bring himself to even think before.

“When you asked me why I came back and I told you I dreamed of you, I’ve admitted that was an evasion. Shall I tell you the whole of it now?”

He realizes that as long as they keep circling their answers and then parrying back to one another, there will be no clarity.

“Why?” she sounds suspicious, wary even, “Because we are going to die here?”

“Because you deserve to know the whole truth. Or because I am selfish enough to want to tell you. I’m not sure which.”

“Jaime?” 

From her tone, his words of self loathing seem to have softed her response, and he’s so desperate to speak the rest that it comes tumbling out.

“I know that I am not good enough for you, strained and broken, but I have to tell you the truth; because, that’s what you have made of me… someone who doesn’t hide from the truth, no matter how inconvenient. You changed me. ”

“That was always within you,” she protests. “That day in the baths at Harrenhal you tore the stories everyone tells from me with the stark ugliness of unvarnished truth. That memory is burned into me to the core.”

How strongly does that image echo with his own experience, the memory of that moment one he’s replayed over and over, the moment he found himself reacting so unexpectedly. ( _That wasn’t the first time_ , part of him suggests, _remember the sapphires_.)

“I told you once that I’d only ever loved Cersei, that all the things I’d done were only for her, for love, but something changed within me at Harrenhal. Because of you, I cannot be that man anymore, who would let the world burn to satisfy her vanity and her cruelty. You made me yearn to do good. I tried to go on, to go back to the way things were, but you transformed me, Brienne. I came north because of you. I broke with the one person I had always been true to; because, of you. I came back for you, at Harrenhal, because I needed you… because I love you.”

He half expects her to mock him, out of disbelief or out of defensiveness or simply out of habit. She doesn’t though. Something about what he has said or the way he has said it leaves her speechless for a time.

When she finally speaks, her voice has that tight clipped sound he’s come to recognize as the impact of her trying to rein in strong emotions.

“That’s why you gave me the sword.” He can almost hear the inner workings of her mind whirring as she struggles to keep his revelation from upsetting her understanding of reality.

“You deserve the sword, far more than I could ever hope to.” He seeks to explain, to keep her from thinking he might believe otherwise. “At the time I told myself that was my only motivation, but I’ve since come to realize that was a lie to myself, that it was also a way of giving myself to you, though it seems neither of us realized it then. I would never want to cheapen-”

“I came back for you because I couldn’t stand not to,” she interrupts suddenly, veering back towards the start of the conversation abruptly, “I had to watch Renly die, but the idea of turning my back and leaving you to perish on your own was worse than that. I didn’t believe… I never thought-”

“Why not let me die? The Kingslayer? The traitor? The man with shit for honor?”

Renly, she just compared him to Renly, as he not so long ago contrasted her with Cersei. Hope springs within him anew that this is not avoidance of his confession but something else.

“Because you are all of that, and yet none of that really defines who you are. I couldn’t stand by and let the man I love, no matter how foolishly or how (I thought) helplessly… I couldn’t leave you to die, Jaime.”

“We both picked a hell of a time to say something,” he almost laughs for joy, “Now when we are about to freeze to death.”

“If we do,” she replies, “at least we’ll die knowing the truth.”

Outside the blizzard continues to rage, but something within him feels warmer than it ever has in his entire life.

**Author's Note:**

> Written to the prompt "Ways you said I love you: As we huddle together, the storm raging outside".


End file.
